In general, a transflective liquid crystal display panel is formed by means of cell alignment between a color filter substrate and an array substrate, and a liquid crystal layer is encapsulated in the space between these two substrates. Because the liquid crystal molecules do not emit light by themselves, the display needs a light source in order to display image. The LCD display may be divided into a transmissive type, a reflective type and a transflective type according to different types of the light sources being used.
In which, the transmissive type LCD display mainly uses a backlight source as the light source, the backlight source is disposed at the rear of the liquid crystal panel, and pixel electrode of the array substrate is a transparent electrode to be used as a transmission region, which helps the light of the backlight source to pass through the liquid crystal layer to show the image. The reflective type LCD display mainly uses a front light source or an external light source as the light source, the array substrate thereof uses reflective electrodes in metal or other good reflective material as the reflection region, which is suitable to reflect the front light source or the external light source. The transflective type LCD display may be considered as a combination of the transmissive type LCD panel and the reflective type LCD panel, where not only the reflection region is provided on the array substrate, but also the transmission region is provided on the array substrate, and it can use the backlight source and the front light source or the external light source to display simultaneously.
The advantage of the transmissive type LCD display is that a bright image can be displayed in a dark environment, but the disadvantage is that the transmitted lights take up a small proportion in the lights emitted by the backlight source, and therefore the utilization of the backlight source is low. It needs to greatly increase the brightness of the backlight source so as to increase the display brightness. Thus, the energy consumption is high.
The advantage of the reflective type LCD display is that it can use the sunlight or front light source as the light source and the power consumption is relatively low, but the disadvantage is that it cannot display image in the dark environment due to its dependency on the external light source.
The transflective type LCD display has both the advantages of the transmissive type LCD panel and the advantages of the reflective type LCD panel, which can display bright image in the dark environment, and can be used indoors and outdoors. Thus, it is widely used for the display devices of portable mobile electronic products, such as cellphones, digital cameras, handheld computers, GPRS and other mobile products.